Maurice ESTEVE

Maurice Estève – Life, Colour Lithographs and Original Prints

A self-taught painter who became one of the great colourists of post-war France, Maurice Estève (1904-2001) belongs to the generation of the new School of Paris, alongside Jean Bazaine, Alfred Manessier and Charles Lapicque. His canvases – interlocking planes of saturated colour bearing strange, often invented titles – owe as much to Fouquet, Poussin and Cézanne as to modern abstraction. Printmaking was a vital part of his output: some eighty colour lithographs, almost all pulled at the Mourlot workshop in Paris, carry the intensity of his palette onto paper.

At its two Paris galleries, Le Coin des Arts offers original lithographs by Maurice Estève, pencil-signed and numbered, chosen for the quality of the impression, their provenance and their condition.

From Culan to Barcelona: an unconventional apprenticeship

Estève was born on 2 May 1904 at Culan, a village in the Cher département of central France, and spent his early childhood with his grandparents. Joining his parents in Paris in 1913, he was overwhelmed by the Louvre, above all by Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano. Back in Culan during the First World War, he began to paint in 1915.

Returning to Paris in 1918, he was apprenticed to a typesetter and then to a studio designing modern furniture, attending drawing classes in the evening; in 1919 he discovered Cézanne. In 1923 he spent a year in Barcelona running a workshop that designed shawls and textiles. On his return in 1924 he drew at the free studio of the Académie Colarossi in Montparnasse – the closest he came to a formal art education.

Debut in the 1930s and the Delaunay murals

After a brief Surrealist interlude around 1927, influenced by Giorgio de Chirico, Estève held his first solo exhibition in 1930 at the Galerie Yvangot, where the critic Maurice Raynal took notice. Between 1930 and 1936 he cut around ten linocuts, mostly in black and white, for the portfolios of the group known as Les Indélicats. In 1937 he was included in an exhibition of French painting in Stockholm with Matisse, Picasso, Juan Gris and Léger.

That same year he worked with Robert Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay on the vast murals for the Air and Railway Pavilions of the Paris International Exhibition – his first experience of colour on an architectural scale.

War years and the rise of a new generation

During the Occupation Estève showed at the Salon d’Automne from 1941 to 1944 and was counted among the “Young Painters of the French Tradition”, with Jean Bazaine, Alfred Manessier, Lapicque, Singier and Le Moal. In 1942 he signed an exclusive contract with the dealer Louis Carré, which lasted until 1949, and in 1943 he took part in “Douze peintres d’aujourd’hui” at the Galerie de France with, among others, Jacques Villon.

From 1946 his work travelled abroad – to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, then to Copenhagen and Stockholm. His Métiers series of 1947 marked the move to non-figurative painting built from organic, tightly fitted forms.

Estève and Britain

British audiences encountered Estève early: his work was included in a group exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1951 and shown at the Parsons Gallery, London, in 1954. The Tate holds two works on paper – The Cicada, a lithograph of 1956, and Composition 166, a watercolour of 1957. More recently, the Redfern Gallery in London devoted a solo exhibition to him in 2006.

Venice, Kassel and the European retrospectives

Estève exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and at documenta II in Kassel in 1959. Denmark proved especially loyal: the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen showed him in 1956 and 1961. In 1957 he designed stained-glass windows for the church at Berlincourt in the Swiss Jura. His first retrospective opened at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1961 before touring to Düsseldorf, Copenhagen and Oslo.

Alongside oil painting he worked in watercolour, charcoal, monotype (1963-64) and papier collé – his collages received their own catalogue raisonné in 1999 – and designed tapestry cartoons. He was awarded the Grand Prix National des Arts in 1970 and, from 1972, exhibited with the Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris. Major retrospectives followed in Marseille, Paris and Metz in 1981, and at the Grand Palais in 1986.

After Maurice and Monique Estève’s gift to the city in 1985, the Musée Estève opened in Bourges in 1987, housed in the fifteenth-century Hôtel des Échevins; further gifts came in 1989, 1997 and 2008, and the refurbished museum reopened in spring 2025. Estève settled permanently in Culan in 1995 and died there in June 2001, aged 97.

The printmaker: Mourlot and his publishers

Estève’s first lithograph, made in 1949, illustrated Jean Lescure’s poem La plaie ne se ferme pas. Thereafter he worked almost exclusively with the Mourlot printing house, building up each sheet colour by colour with the same patience he brought to his canvases; deep reds, blues and velvety blacks dominate.

His prints were issued by leading publishers in Paris and Zurich: Villand & Galanis (L’Envol, 1958), L’Œuvre Gravée, Zurich (Aladin, 1958), Alain Mazo (Lunaire administratif, 1966; Rivanoir, 1969), the Neue Galerie, Zurich (Anubis, 1969), the review XXe Siècle (Bossaille, 1974), Berggruen (Bebaros, 1975) and Claude Bernard (Java vrillée, 1977). Print runs are modest, usually from a few dozen to around 150 impressions.

The standard reference is the catalogue raisonné by Monique Prudhomme-Estève and Hans Moestrup, Maurice Estève, l’œuvre gravé. Catalogue raisonné 1929-1986, with an introduction by Dora Vallier (Copenhagen, 1986). Dealers cite it as “Prudhomme-Estève/Moestrup no.” or simply “Prudhomme no.”.

Collecting Estève lithographs: what to look for

Before buying, check the printer (Mourlot in most cases), the print run and its numbering (or an artist’s proof or hors commerce impression), the pencil signature, the catalogue raisonné number, the publisher, the provenance and above all the condition. Estève’s broad fields of colour show every trace of light-staining, foxing or creasing, so full margins and unfaded colour matter a great deal; a good mount and UV-filtering glazing will keep them that way.

Original print or reproduction? Many lithographs “after” Estève were printed for books, magazines and catalogues, and his exhibition posters (Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Bourges) are widely sold. Unsigned and unnumbered, these are not original prints. A true original was conceived by the artist for printing, issued in a limited edition under his supervision, pencil-signed and recorded in the catalogue raisonné.

Le Coin des Arts selects every Estève lithograph with care for its authenticity, provenance and condition, and can advise on framing and conservation. You may also enjoy the prints of Jean Bazaine, Alfred Manessier, Roger Bissière, André Lanskoy and Serge Poliakoff.

Sources and references

Tate – Maurice Estève · Bourges museums – Musée Estève · Monique Prudhomme-Estève and Hans Moestrup, Maurice Estève, l’œuvre gravé. Catalogue raisonné 1929-1986, Copenhagen, 1986 · Maurice Estève – Wikipedia · Galerie Applicat-Prazan · Ceysson & Bénétière